


Lost Boys and Girls

by tisfan



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Favor, M/M, lost their powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 08:24:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17721638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: The queen of the fairies wants to meet Iron Man. Why does this sound like a really bad idea?Tony Stark Bingo T5 - Lost their powers(and bingo, straight down the T column)





	Lost Boys and Girls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monobuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monobuu/gifts).



> I'm totally blaming Monobuu for daring me to go for a bingo tonight.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Uh, no?” Stephen rubbed absently at his wrist, like his fingers were aching.

“You want me, me, _Iron Man_ , me,” Tony said, thumping his chest a few times to make his point better known, “to, and I quote, strip down all tech, and walk unarmed into what, exactly, did you say?”

“A court of faeries,” Stephen repeated. “It’s the summer court, if that helps any.”

“It does not help any, how does it _help any_ , you do know that the arc reactor is the thing keeping a buttload of shrapnel from reaching my heart, right?”

“The Summer Queen has promised you safe passage,” Stephen said.

“Does she understand that I will die if--”

“The land of the Fey will keep you alive, until you return,” Stephen said. “I have it on good authority.”

“Whose, exactly?”

“Titania’s,” Stephen said. “She’s the queen of the summerlands, and more powerful than you can comprehend. Offending her, under these circumstances…”

“I want to know exactly how these circumstances ended up with my having to walk naked through fairyland. That sounds like a bad porno, Stephen. I don’t like that it sounds like a bad porno, I want good quality porn, with active consent and --”

“I don’t _know_ the circumstances,” Stephen said. “That’s why we have to go to Titania’s court in the first place. To find out.”

“I love how you’re the one who has a magical fairy dust curse put on you, and I’m the one who has to go bargain on your behalf, with a magical fairy dust princess--”

“--queen--”

“Princess,” Tony said again, loftily, “to get it removed. How did that happen, Stephen, tell me that part, if you can’t explain the rest of it.”

“Part of the etiquette of the fairy court is stating your important connections,” Stephen said. “Name-dropping, if you will, to impress on the fairy you’re dealing with that you are, in fact, a person worth speaking with. If I didn’t have enough connections to impress, then I wouldn’t get a hearing at all.”

“I have a reputation, even in the fairy lands?” Tony wondered, scratching absently at his beard.

“Tony,” Stephen said, gently, “you wielded the infinity gauntlet and brought half the universe back from oblivion. Including Titania’s husband, Oberon. You’re quite literally the best known person alive in the universe. In any multitude of universes.”

“That’s… unhealthy for my ego,” Tony said. “I prefer just being the guy who did what needed to be done. And I don’t have the gauntlet anymore, I destroyed it.” He had wanted to destroy the stones, too, but they were too powerful for that. The best he could have done in those circumstances, he did. Returning them to vastly well-protected hiding places.

Even now, years later, he could feel the one in Stephen’s necklace, the time stone, and the way it called to him.

He couldn’t be trusted with that power. Not for long, and he knew it.

“She wants to thank you, and in exchange for your notice, she’s agreed to aid me with my… issue.”

“Your issue where your skin changes colors with the season and I might add, you’re growing leaves out of your hair.”

“More than likely, I accidentally annoyed a dryad, but as I cannot cure myself, I need to know to whom I owe amends. Will you please assist?”

“If the alternative is that my boyfriend turns into a tree, yes, I’ll help. I just don’t like these conditions.”

“I know,” Stephen said. “But I’ll be with you the whole time.”

“I’m comforted,” Tony said, as dryly as he could manage. Even if it was true, he didn’t need to scrape his face raw and present his sincerity to the world.

***

Tony pressed his hand over the arc reactor, feeling the dull ache where his sternum used to be. “All right, open up,” Tony told the suit. He slid his shirt up, twisted the reactor and removed it from its casing.

The pain was… well, he’d had worse. But not lots worse. His heart stuttered and slammed around in his ribcage like it was trying to escape. He gave the reactor core over to the suit and let it close up, sealing itself around the precious device.

“Come on--” Stephen held out his hand. Tony took it, and they stepped over the circle of mushrooms, from reality, to somewhere else.

It was cold, for somewhere called the Summer Lands. Like the day after an ice storm. Everything was bright and sunny, even if he couldn’t see the sun, but also frozen.

Flowers in bloom were encased in ice. Fruits were perfect glass globes. There was at least a foot of snow on the ground, and the crust of ice didn’t break beneath their feet.

Tony took a deep breath, and then another, before he realized that he wasn’t in pain. That nothing hurt, at all. He stared.

“We’re frozen in time,” Stephen said. “Like everything else here. The shrapnel won’t reach your heart, because no time at all will actually pass.”

“Magic sucks,” Tony said.

“That’s not what you said last night,” Stephen joked.

“Great one,” a voice said, and Tony had to turn all the way around before he saw the speck of light that addressed them.

If a lense flare could come to life, that was what Tony was looking at. A tiny little… person that existed inside a ball of light. That flew. And talked, apparently.

“If you’ll come this way, the Queen awaits.”

“After you,” Tony said, waving dramatically.

“At the same time as me,” the JJ Abrams special effects critter said. “Or you’ll be left behind.”

“Right,” Tony said. He wiggled his eyebrows, trying to express exasperation without actually expressing it.

He expected to be lead to a castle. An ice palace might have been nifty, and in keeping with the setting.

Instead, the little creature -- Tony couldn’t tell if it was a boy, or a girl, or even if it mattered at all -- lead them to what appeared to be a grove in the woods. Inside, the air was warm, the grass was green, and the trees were moving in the slight breeze. A girl sat there, in the grass, with red hair and a smart, watchful expression. She was playing with a puzzle, a dozen moving parts, and she changed it from a ball to a cage to a jacob’s ladder with seeming ease.

A woman, barely older than the girl, stood at their arrival.

She was beautiful. And deadly.

“Iron Man,” she said, and her voice was like singing crystal. “Welcome to the Summer lands.”

“A bit cold for that, but thanks,” Tony said.

“Ixnay on the arcasm-say,” Stephen muttered.

“And the good doctor, welcome.”

“I’m honored, your Majesty.”

“Quite the lover’s bond between you,” she said, and she reached out one long fingered hand -- Tony thought she had an extra joint in each finger, but she still looked graceful, perfect. Like his hand was the one deficient -- to touch something. Tony couldn’t see what she touched, but it played havoc with his feelings. He remembered everything, from that first moment when Stephen appeared, to the moment where Stephen promised the Time Stone in exchange for Tony. To the moment when Stephen returned and fell, weeping, into Tony’s embrace. And all the moments after, and the ones in between.

He looked at his lover with fresh eyes, seeing everything, everything between them, as the Queen must be seeing it, in that exact instant.

“You truly love him,” she murmured. “And he truly loves you.”

“It’s a chance not one in a thousand couples get, no matter what the storybooks say,” Tony said, unable to stop his mouth before it smarted off again.

“I like you, Tony Stark,” the Queen said.

“That’s good, I think,” Tony said.

“For the moment,” she said. “But I’ll warn you, I collect the things I like.. Falter in your devotion, and I may take it upon myself to claim you.”

“Not a chance, lady. You’re beautiful, and all that, but, Stephen is all I’m ever going to need,” Tony responded.

“Here, perhaps,” she said. “And now. In this world. But there are infinite worlds, as you well know. So, I will give you a gift.”

“I was told it was unwise to accept gifts, without something of equal value to exchange,” Tony said.

“Perhaps,” the Queen said. “But this is not mine to give you. She was entrusted to me in a universe that died. A last minute plea, from another Tony Stark, in another where, another when, who loved someone else. Morgan, darling?”

The woman held out her hand and the girl got up and came to her. “Yes, your Majesty?” She had a soft, reedy voice, and her eyes were deep brown and full of intelligence.

“This is Tony Stark,” the Queen said. “Tony Stark, this is the child of your counterpart, in a universe that no longer exists. She has no family, no friends, even the very molecules that formed her solar system are gone. She is truly, one of the orphans. And in that universe, the person that Tony Stark loved the most… was Pepper Potts. Morgan is their child.”

Tony looked down into a pair of eyes that were almost identical to his own.

“I cannot repay the Tony Stark of that universe for the favor he did me,” the Queen said, “but I can protect his child, and I can let her go into the hands of those that will love her, and cherish her. If you will accept this burden, I will consult with the good Doctor on the nature of the curse he is under.”

Morgan let go of the fairy queen’s hand and held out those tiny fingers to him. “Are you my daddy?”

Tony dropped to one knee, studying the child. In his world, Pepper had married Happy Hogan, had suffered through several miscarriages, and finally ended up adopting. She’d dated Tony briefly, but it hadn’t worked out.

Tony had never considered being a father.

But he saw that child, that little soul…

“I am now.”


End file.
